More Than A Job
by The Trinity Tree
Summary: One year is enough time to inflict change upon anyone. The Crysila caravan roam the continent in their search for myrrh, and come across some insights along the way. A series of oneshots.
1. December

This was originally intended as a response to a calendar challenge suggested by SasukeBlade in the Moogle's Nest forum, started last December. The dungeon was Rebena Te Ra, and the theme was of remembrance or reminiscence.

I never got around to posting this as an individual story, so I've decided to continue the challenge and post each month's tale as stand-alone chapters in one story. Being as I decided all of the pieces would feature the Crysila caravan, it should make sense. It may well be chronological. I'll let you know if this changes. A quick warning; this is pretty long.

In the meantime, please read and enjoy :)

**Crysila's caravan, December**

_My dearest Cecille_

_I sat and watched the sun rise this morning from the point, as I do this day every year and will do for the rest of my life. I could not stay long, as things are very busy and it is somehow never the same without you. _

_Summer here is as beautiful as ever, as I am sure you can recall. The meadow was ablaze with colours – I swear that more are invented every year especially for our little village. It was a wonder to behold, although, of course, not as lovely as you!_

_Your nephew wishes me to tell you to hurry home, because although he tries very hard he still cannot come to grips with a quill so that he can write you himself. I bet you can hardly imagine what he looks like now. A year is a long time for such a little boy to change, so I shall be surprised if you recognise him!_

* * *

_My dearest Cecille_

_Beatriz from next door sends her regards, and also her condolences. She was very sorry to hear of the death of your mother. But she offers you some words of comfort, for whatever good they may do you. _

_It is fall here now, and the trees are gold and red and brown. I think your mother would have appreciated the sentiment, for all that is beautiful and fragile folds away at this time of year to hide from the coming frost, hoping to wait out the cold. Some pretty flowers do not pass the winter. But, in one way or another, some will rise again in spring._

_Do you remember when we were only ten and eleven seasons each? We'd hunt for the first flowers in spring, and when we found one your mother would hand us an apple apiece and put our precious little find in a pot. The very last time we went looking, you found a blue flower. I'd never seen one like it before._

_Do you remember it?_

_

* * *

__My dearest Cecille_

_It has been so long since you wrote last, I often feared the worst. Imagine my joy on receiving your most recent letter! I tipped the moogle fifteen gil, and he let your nephew play with his pom-pom. What funny little creatures they are. I wonder what kupo means._

_Times are hard here. The harvest was bad this year – the upper Jegon flooded and most of the crops were spoiled. I helped your sister salvage what we could, and I only hope that there is enough to see us all through this winter._

_You should be home by then. Right? _

_

* * *

__My dearest Cecille_

_Without you around I find myself looking back more and more. You seem to be my anchor in the present. I do so wish you would write, so that I can stop myself dwelling on the past._

_My father always said I was too much of a daydreamer to run a farm. Maybe you __have__ to be a daydreamer to run this farm, or maybe I just proved him wrong. It is certainly an education. One has to learn from mistakes, although there is little room for trial and error in this business. I won't bore you with talk of crop rotations and irrigation. After all, they hardly compare to the tales you tell when you come home at the end of each year._

_Tell me Cecille, while on the caravan have you ever made a mistake? Did you do something wrong, and thought that, perhaps, if you had the chance to go back, you would do it differently? _

_I sometimes wonder whether I made a mistake that day when I let you leave without asking you to marry me._

_

* * *

__My dearest Cecille_

_I hope this letter finds you well, for you seem to have vanished from the face of this world. Passing caravans and traders have not seen you since summer. Where are you, Cecille? _

_The moogle I entrust this letter to vows he will not stop until he finds you. If he cannot, well… _

_You said the day you joined the caravan all those years ago that you would seek out lands undiscovered. That you would be famous for your exploits. That you would cross the boundaries so far left well alone. I only hope that you have crossed such a boundary with the intent of returning, because no reward of fame and fortune is worth the price of losing you._

_I remember you promised me you would return. I remember many things – the day I first saw you, the day we danced at the festival, the day we sat up on the point for the first time and threw conkers in the sea. If remembering you is the only way I can keep you alive, I shall do so. Wherever you are, I hope you are safe. I enclosed your blue flower, the one I pressed for you that summer, as a charm of sorts._

_Winter gets closer every day, and still you do not come back. Write home, Cecille._

_All my love,_

_Harry_

* * *

The letters are much creased around the edges, as if someone has read them often. One is torn at the corner, and has been lovingly mended with paste and delicacy so that a casual observer would never notice. As the letters are folded and thrust safely into a deep pocket, a blue flower falls to the ground.

The Clavat on the hillside looks down in mild dismay and stoops to retrieve it. The flower does not return to the pocket, however, but is pushed securely into the buttonhole of her overcoat where she can keep bright blue eyes on it.

She needs the overcoat. Rebena Te Ra is a cold and lonely place.

"Cecille," a soft voice hails her. "Are you prepared?"

"Aye," she agrees. She is tall, this Clavat, with short silver-blonde hair that shimmers wetly in the fog. It is difficult to tell her age; perhaps she is thirty? Definitely no older than forty, although there is a wisdom in those blue eyes that comes only with long experience. She is not beautiful, because what use has a caravanner for looks? Her face comes to a sharp point, her skin is pale, her face frowns as if questioning the world at every passing second. In the fog it is difficult to see the scar that run across one cheek, but it is there nonetheless.

"I like not this place," the second voice confides, and a Yuke steps up out of the fog to join her. Insofar as it is possible to tell by glancing, this Yuke is male, and perhaps as old as his companion Clavat Cecille. Magic rings of Cure and Clear glow on his giant furred fingers in response to his agitation; his papery wings flicker in the sigh of the wind. "I can hear the cries of times long past. There must be ghosts aplenty here."

"Ghosts can be banished, Aonyx," the Clavat woman replies firmly. "Wounds heal."

"Let's hope we aren't going to be getting any wounds," says a new voice, a voice that can only belong to a Selkie. The words are drawled with a nonchalant, lazy ease that suggest, if you are not careful, that ease can be directed towards other less innocent things. The Selkie looms from the fog like a ship's figurehead to join his fellow caravanners. The way that he leans so casually on his weapon – a racket of fine craftsmanship – suggests incredible self confidence with just a hint of pride and arrogance. But, as he himself often said, what was a Selkie without that?

"So that's Rebena," he says, almost to himself, "And here was me thinking it was just a story."

"Just because it is a story does not mean it does not exist, Catseye," Aonyx the Yuke points out sagely. He hefts the chalice to his shoulder with a strength too massive for such spindly arms, "Even if such tales of harmony and prosperity seemed too much a like a child's fairytale to be true."

"Spare me the philosophy," Catseye the Selkie groans. His nickname is now so familiar to his companions that they use it more readily than his birth name; that real name is rarely spoken, and given only to those who merit the highest award of trust. Cecille often wonders what it is that her Selkie companion has done to be wary of distributing his identity. As it is, she does not ask just as she has not done before. Catseye stares out over Rebena, green eyes narrowed.

The view below is not pleasant.

All children know of Rebena Te Ra, even if not by that name; it has become a metaphor. The much diluted, much embroidered version of the tale is told around every campfire. Rebena Te Ra is a city of legend, a city of myths and a time where the gods walked among mortals. Once, it is said, the four tribes lived in harmony here. The hands of four races built this place, the minds of four races shaped it and the kings of four races ruled it fairly and wisely. Those kings lived atop the great pyramid in the centre, the same pyramid whose crumbled remains emerge from the fog like some monster.

The Elders do say that, in another time, another place, another world – pyramids were tombs.

The fog is everywhere, like shroud. Perhaps this is appropriate for a city that has laid hollow and dead for thousands of years.

"This place doesn't seem real. It's not natural," the Selkie mutters. "For all we knew, Aonyx, this place _was_ a fairytale. A story to frighten little children."

"I remember hearing it for the first time," Cecille says quietly. "My mother told it to me when I argued with the Yukish boy next door. She said that great things can be accomplished when the races work together, and that terrible things befall us when they don't."

"Aye, well." The Selkie shrugs expressively. He does not seem cold at all, for all that he wears just a tunic and a tattered jacket of plundered furs. "Goes to show, doesn't it."

"Endellia," Aonyx calls into the gloom, "be you ready?"

"Aye, Aonyx."

The fourth and final member of this caravan joins the line, staring down into the valley. Behind her sallet of diamond her face twists in distaste for the densely overgrown ruins, and an overwhelming sadness for those that had lived and died here in this ghost town. The Yuke girl, the youngest of the caravan, slides five rings of magic into place on her fingers with a deliberative air.

"I hear the tree," she states, "It weeps. We were right, Aonyx. Whatever despicable, miserable act happened here, the stories do it no justice."

"Always the case, Endellia," her companion replies sadly. Then, with a final look exchanged, the caravan of Crysila town plunges into the fog.

* * *

Cecille had long since found that she fought best when she did not concentrate.

Her reflexes had kept her alive now for so long that she feared thinking too hard would completely put her off. It is all too easy to miss the smallest sound when one is too focused on other things. Instead, the Clavat would spread her senses all around, feeling rather than seeing.

Many a wild swing from the edge of the melee had been detected by her strange vision that even sharp-eyed Catseye would have missed. Many a cracked twig had given away an enemy that would have stolen up on even cautious Aonyx. Anyone who sparred against Cecille for practise would often remark that she seemed to be in a trance the entire time, relying on some other part of her being to do the fighting while…

While what? What is it that Cecille does? Where does she go?

Not even Cecille appears to know. When asked, the woman just shakes her head slowly and says, "I just contemplate."

"Contemplate what?" is usually the next question. That never gets an answer.

* * *

The gateways of Rebena do not open without some sort of sacrifice.

Cecille knows this, although she cannot explain how. She places herself squarely on the decorated switch will pulses orange in recognition of her weight. It takes much courage to stare down the mad golden eyes of the skeleton mage as it raises its staff, and as the first glowing embers leap in her direction she grits her teeth and shuts her eyes and -

- _she'd had to do it to show him that she could. _

_It was not unkind, the way they laughed at her, but she could tell that they thought she couldn't play their games because she was only a girl. And such stupid games they were! Tests of daring and bravery, like flicking fingertips into the flames._

_She stares hard at him, and pushes her hand into the fire just like he'd done. Only she does not pull her hand out after the first second, because she is not frightened. They all stare at her in awe for a moment, but when her hand still remains in the heart of the flames alarm begins to creep into their eyes._

_She tries to keep their gazes but all of a sudden it begins to hurt. It shouldn't hurt as badly as this, should it? One quick glance into the fire and she sees the skin peeling, writhing in the heat, blistering, and it hurts SO MUCH - _

- the flames of the Fira spell belch around her, rolling off her flame-resistant armour like so many harmless waves. The switch sings out a note under her tough leather shoes, and the way is open. Hair singed at the tips she leaps through the curling smoke like a demon.

The skull of the mage rolls to a stop at the foot of a collapsed statue, grinning. Without a backward look, Cecille strides on.

* * *

The fog is thick, so thick that it might have been miasma. That thought causes her to shiver, and she tries to shrug away the clinging tendrils with a sudden unease. Catseye brushes past her reassuringly on his languid patrol of the crystal boundary, and she is grateful for the Selkie's presence.

A few feet away, Aonyx's shadow becomes visible for just one moment before the fog swallows it again -

- _what was that thing? She'd never seen anything like it._

_Cecille and her companion stood in awe on the riverbank, hand in hand, stopped dead in whatever game they were playing by the shape in the fog._

_There is a creak of timbers and a white wing flaps just once in the wind. Someone's voice calls out a quiet command and the shape withdraws._

"_What's that?" she asks, and Harry squeezes her hand knowledgeably, all of one year her intellectual superior at eight years old._

"_It's a boat," he confides in her. "The Jegon gets all kinds of people a-goin' up and down it."_

"_Not up here," she says adamantly. "There's a waterfall 'tween the sea and here, I seen it. How it get all the way up to Crysila?"_

"_Don't know," Harry says. "You suppose it's a ghost ship?"_

"_Must be," she agrees, and together they watch the strange contraption recede into the heavy gloom. How did it stay afloat? There had to be someone controlling it - there had been the voice in the fog. The crew, although lady knew what had happened to them. Had they drowned at sea and returned to wander near their homes? Or -_

_­_- and then Endellia is calling for help and Cecille cannot see her, for the fog wraps round her like a thick blanket, muffling the noise. Her hand clenches on the hilt of her beautiful weapon, Excalibur, and the red scars on her pale skin that remain from that silly childhood game seem to twist into recognisable shapes for a moment.

Then Excalibur is out, scything the fog, and the Clavat is calling for her friend because nothing would be so terrible as for her to die in this city, so far away from home.

* * *

Endellia is wounded now, but not enough to warrant a waste of healing magic. The Yuke girl continues as if she is not hampered and so they follow her lead.

They must be close now, or at least close enough; Endellia's magical rings had easily opened the stairway to the top of the pyramid that had been sealed long ago. The stairs are not accessible from this side of the dead city though, and so they follow their route back cautiously. But retracing one's steps is not easy, especially when every corner looks the same and the past presses in at every footfall.

"I hate this place," Catseye says dispassionately, drawing close to Cecille's side. She merely nods, a woman of few words.

"What happened here, d'you think?" he asks. It does not take a scholar to see that the seemingly random piles of rubble that litter the base of the central pyramid are not so random after all. There is a structure to them that suggests houses, dwellings. To some extent, they all know, the stories are true. People had lived here once, together.

"I don't know," she replies. "But can't you feel it? This place is trying to suck the memories from us. As if it's trying to replace whatever it lost."

"Put whatever words you like around it," Catseye mutters, stretching. "I just think it feels plain weird."

She turns away, a smile flashing across her face at the Selkie's blunt speech. Cecille does not smile very often, because smiles are precious and should be used sparingly. Otherwise, they lose their value.

Despite Catseye's dismissal, Cecille cannot help feeling that she has put her finger on the exact point. Rebena had been something once, and now it sought to regain that something from them all. People were what made a city alive; Rebena's people were all gone. She sees that clearly, even through the fog.

What makes people… people?

Thoughts? Feelings?

Memories?

A wind blows, and Cecille shivers in her overcoat. The flower, her blue flower, is swept away and she snatches at it, too fearful of losing it. Her fingers close around the stem tightly –

_- "Ophelia!" the Lilty boy calls, "Come back, Ophelia!"_

"_Shan't!" his companion shouts back petulantly. She is a Clavat girl, with a short blonde plait and cloudy eyes, and she runs across the field with the tiny Lilty in pursuit. Her footsteps are light, for she is young and weighs nothing, but it is enough to throw up clouds of petals from the blossoms that crowd the meadow in a riot of colour and shapes. The petals that are carried back to the Lilty boy are blue like the sky._

_Beyond Ophelia the houses cluster at the edge of the field, and beyond them is the pyramid –_

- and Cecille stops, because that memory is not her own and suddenly she is frightened.

Catseye walks into the back of her as she stops abruptly. Almost instantly, he is by her side, eyes watchful like a bird of prey.

"What is it? Did you see something?"

"No," Cecille replies, and stares at the flower. "It's nothing."

"You sure?" Catseye presses her. He looks dubious. For all his insouciance, he is a kind heart and can see in Cecille's eyes the raging fires of sudden, stinging anxiety. But then Aonyx and Endellia are almost upon them, and he knows that Cecille will not confess her problems to the group for fear of seeming weak. Instead he steps back respectfully and allows her to plunge on ahead as she always does, the brave one.

The fog parts with theatrical timing.

The pyramid is revealed, towering above the approaching Cecille as if she were a child.

* * *

She leads them up the stairs. They are carved into the pyramid itself, decorated with all manner of sigils and runes. Even Aonyx, a scholar to the marrow, knows nothing of their meaning. Endellia – with a lack of patience and abundance of eagerness at the possibility of another skirmish so unbecoming of a Yuke – falls back to hurry him on more than once, because he holds the chalice and his fascination with this intricate piece of lost history is slowing them down.

"I wonder what it says," he remarks to Endellia, and she cranes her head to look at the pictograms that adorn the stone around them.

"I suspect the pyramid was one of the first buildings the Rebenans constructed," she suggests. "Perhaps it was built before quill and parchment? Maybe it records their early history."

"If only I could understand," Aonyx sighs wistfully. "If there were more time I could note down some of these runes – it would be most interesting to translate them. Who knows? We might discover something of our ancestry that we never knew – the extent of creationism by the lady goddess, the coming of the miasma – "

"The past often only reveals more of our ignorance," Endellia waves a paw dismissively, and the fog glistens wetly on her jewelled rings. "It is more sensible to dwell on the present, or perhaps the future. Hurry, before Cecille gets away from us."

Cecille is almost running now.

There is an urge to reach the top of the pyramid, a sort of inexplicable driving force, as if she somehow expects to find a solution to a problem she is not aware of at the peak. There is something, she is sure of it. Something important.

Her eyes are focused on the slick steps so that she does not trip; this is perhaps why she notices the little picture near the foot of the stone wall running parallel to the stairs. At first she wonders what it is about this engraving that catches her attention, and then she realises that it seems somewhat familiar.

The engraving is of a figure. The posture exudes some sort of careless air, and she recognises Catseye's signature slouch. She stops, and her eyes are drawn back to the Selkie toiling up the steps some short distance behind her. The engraving is not him, certainly, but it is a Selkie nonetheless. She crouches, and her questing fingers brush aside a clump of moss to better see –

_- the young man storms ahead of her up the stairs, and it is all she can do to keep up even though her heart is breaking and she can barely stand for all the grief burdening her shoulders. _

"_Wait," she sobs, "Please wait!"_

"_I will not hear you speak!" the young Clavat man shouts back. His voice could have been a kind one, but it is twisted by outright fury and pain. "Every word you utter brings more suffering some poor soul!"_

"_I don't understand – "_

_The Clavat whirls on the stairs and glares down at her; some dozen steps above her, he appears twice her height. Twice her worth. Such is the nature of his glare – she is nothing to him now._

"_You wouldn't understand, Deti," he snarls, "You have never had someone taken from you before their time. My sister was taken this morning by the sickness. She was raving all night, seeing terrible visions, and this morning she coughed and coughed and then simply died right in my mother's arms."_

"_But Elliot," the young woman pleads, "how could that be my fault?"_

_The perspective shifts subtly, the watcher becomes aware of what this woman is. She is of the Selkie tribe, with lavender hair and attractive curves, the markings of her clan tattooed tastefully on her smooth skin. And somehow, that is why the blame for Elliot's ordeal is laid at her feet._

"_How many people have died of the sickness, Deti?" Elliot growls, "How many?"_

"_I don't know – "_

"_Two hundred so far! Two hundred lives, and no one knows where it came from or what causes it! We only know that it arrived with the Selkies. You and your damn shooting star of ill fortune, that brought the sickness to Rebena that drove my sister mad!"_

"_Elliot," the Selkie woman wails, tears pouring down her face, "I swear to you, we Selkies have never before experienced such a thing! And Selkies suffer from the sickness just as much as you Clavats, Lilties and Yukes. How can it be our fault?"_

"_The day we opened our gates to you and your gypsy kind, we sealed our fates," he spits. "Stop following me. I go to the kings to propose that we banish you all back to the swamp from which you came!"_

_And with that he turns and runs again, and the woman collapses to the hard floor with her hands pressed to her eyes, shoulders shaking with absolute desolate despair – _

- and Cecille blinks, because Catseye is nudging her shoulder gently.

"What are you looking at?" he asks with genuine curiosity, and then his eyes narrow to a frown of concern.

"You're crying. Cecille, for the lady's sake, what is it that ails you?"

"This place," Cecille chokes out. "This place – "

"Are you hurt?" a voice asks in alarm, and Aonyx suddenly fills her vision, radiating worry. Endellia hovers close by. There is something about the pyramid that evokes the primal need to stay in a pack.

She tries to explain it to them, and they try to understand.

Rebena died.

That much is agreed in all the stories. Some terrible fate befell the people of the citadel, destroying them utterly and completely. And without people, what is a city? People make a city alive. The life was sucked from Rebena the day those people died and it was left to rot as a hollow, empty shell.

But those things that were once alive seek always to regain what they had. It is the basic nature of living things to strive, to want, to _take life back _– just like flowers that die in winter and are reborn in spring.

And Rebena had retained those strong emotions, the brightest of memories, and recorded them. The echoes of the Rebenans and their lives, their triumphs and sorrows, bounced off the walls of the pyramid.

Cecille, with her wandering mind, had picked those lost scraps of civilisation up and seen the last days of Rebena replayed. In recognition of her vibrant mind, the soul of the city of Rebena sought to take the essence of Cecille away as a replacement for what it had lost. All Rebena needed to regain its glory was people.

What makes people… people?

Thoughts. Feelings.

Memories.

And what better way to attract people back than the very essence of living?

"It's trying to keep me here, Rel Gen," she says grimly. Catseye hears her use his true name and knows that something has shaken his companion to her very core. "Whatever evil spirit that haunts this place, it tries to steal memories away. Don't you feel it? Something trying to reach into your mind, to make you remember things? That is what it wants; strong memories to stay here and be a lure to other people."

He nods slowly, as she finally puts words around the strange sensation that has dogged him since first setting foot in the dead city. Endellia too nods her head.

"We Yukes are sensitive to the fluctuations of the mind," she says. "This place… it is alive, as you say. Alive in the manner of a ghost, eating memories to cling to the past like miasma and monsters."

"I feel it too," Aonyx states, "but the mind does not belong to Rebena itself. Rebena you might call the vessel."

"What does the mind belong to, then?" Catseye asks, looking unsettled at the occult tone of the discussion. For a man whose life is measured by material things, the allusion to the spiritual plane is beyond the level he cares to rise to.

Aonyx pauses, and then raises a paw to point up the pyramid steps. High above them there is the suggestion of an end to the ascension, and a doorway.

Beyond the doorway is darkness.

* * *

The old tomes call them lich.

Cecille had never known how to pronounce the word, but she said it thus: leech.

It fills the chamber before the four caravanners of Crysila, the true size of its form made impossible to determine by the tendrils of unearthly purple light that wreath its ghostly body. Cecille is not sure whether to be frightened or angry or both as it drifts towards them, clutching a staff-like weapon in one bony appendage and what looks like some blood-red crystal ball in the other; there is almost no flesh to it, just a suggestion of a shape under straggling feathers and a tattered cape.

And then Cecille's eyes are drawn to the copper sallet above the scrapheap of a body and her eyes widen as she looks first to Endellia and then to Aonyx.

This thing had been a Yuke, once.

The lich reaches out carefully with the crystal ball, as if offering it to Endellia.

"No," the maiden says forcefully, and Cecille hears the choked sob in her voice. The lich draws back and surveys Aonyx instead, and he too shakes his head.

Cecille feels Catseye draw close to her. There is some communication going on here between the Yukes that she and Catseye cannot comprehend. Even as the lich opens its mouth to shriek a battle cry she has already found the two unobtrusive poles at either side of the cavern just like those Endellia had cast upon outside this crypt. One flickers fiery orange; the other, a cold blue. A barrier?

It is too late to suggest this to her companions. The lich swings a precise arc of the staff towards Endellia and she does not move fast enough. The clang of the staff striking her sallet is enough to hurt Cecille's ears. Endellia is sent sprawling, stricken on the floor.

"Bastard!" screams Catseye, and aims a blast of aura magic at the thing. Without so much as a hint of resistance it passes straight through the ghostly form and dissolves into nothingness on the chamber wall behind.

Cecille points to the magic poles in an overly dramatic gesture that catches Aonyx's eye. "Fire and Blizzard!" she calls urgently. She doesn't know what activating the poles will do but it is the only thing she can think of. With their only offensive mage unconscious on the stone floor though, she can only hope that Aonyx will know what to do.

"I'll do it," Catseye says, darting past Cecille towards Endellia, "Just watch my back!"

With deft movements he removes the Yuke girl's magic rings and stands square, eyes closed in concentration. Cecille knows he can cast, has seen him do so before in times of dire needs, but with nowhere near Endellia's strength and precision.

"With me, Cecille!" Aonyx snaps her out of her reverie and she follows the Yuke without hesitation, rushing in close to the lich to divert its attention from the struggling Selkie. As is expected, Excalibur sweeps through the smoke around the lich without even damaging the disgusting cape draped about its shoulders. This close, she can see the copper sallet atop the body is encrusted with more grime than gems. The lich withdraws up the steps at the rear of the chamber, and Excalibur's next swing rebounds jarringly from some sort of invisible barrier at their foot.

_Aha! That's what the poles are for!_

Catseye releases his casts and the room lights up with such intensity that she almost can't see, but she runs forward anyway through the dissolving barrier. A scything blow from her blade still cuts only livid purple smoke but now she knows that this creature is only a ghost and that Aonyx will know so too.

True enough, she hears the sound of magic behind her: a Cure for Endellia. It is followed by a blast of gold as the two Yukes combine the most potent Holy spell she has ever seen. Her next swing slices off the cape, leaves a gash among the swirling suggestion of a torso as the ghost is dragged onto the material plane. She cries out in triumph; the lich reels back in agony at this unexpected pain.

She is about to plunge Excalibur up the hilt into the clotted feathery mass where the lich's waist could be when suddenly the crystal ball is in her face. Startled, she glances into its bloody depths despite herself.

"NO!" Aonyx bellows. "Cecille, look away!"

She doesn't.

The barrier reforms between the Clavat and her party and their cries are muffled.

_- there is a moon, a red moon, floating lazily in the sky._

_Never has Cecille seen the sky so clear. Even on the brightest blue day, there has always been the fog of miasma coated across it like a thin greyish veneer. As she stands in the window, gazing out at the stars, she can recall nothing from her travels more beautiful than this red moon._

"_Do you like it, princess?" _

_She turns, and finds an elegant Yuke woman stood before her. The sallet is closed, as ever, but a lifetime of learning to read Aonyx lends Cecille the knowledge that she is smiling. She nods, wanting to please this Yuke woman. "It is beautiful."_

"_The red moon," the Yuke gestures expansively. "Do you feel it speak to you, princess?"_

"_I – " Cecille stops, puzzled. There is a conflict somewhere within her, as a youthful eager personality that she knows is not her own tries to use Cecille's mouth to form a reply. She fights it, angrily._

"_I don't hear it," she says abruptly. "What does it mean?"_

_The Yuke tilts her head very slightly. "We Lunites understand that it means great events are in the making."_

_Lunites. From where does she remember that word?_

"_Great events?" Cecille's eyes are dragged inexorably back towards the crimson orb in the blackness of the night. A slight movement catches her eye and, in the far west a flicker of white movement commands her attention. A comet, perhaps. It is there only a moment before disappearing into the far mountain peaks beyond the swamps._

_Suddenly, she is uneasy._

"_Ah," the Yuke woman claps her hands gleefully. "My lord Raem of the blood moon has sent a message."_

"_What?" Her voice sounds dull. Vacant._

_She feels only the gentle pressure of the Yuke's paw on her shoulder. "Forget what I said, dear princess. __**Look at the moon**__."_

_And Cecille does, fighting every step of the way until she can think no more and the red moon is all that she can see – __**and wouldn't it be nice to stay here forever?**__ – _

- "Wake up! For the lady's sake, Cecille, I will punch you into next sowing season if you don't!"

She opens her eyes almost instinctively, and Catseye, leaning over her, pulls back sharply.

"You dumb Clavat," he says roughly. "Don't do that again – what's wrong with your eyes?"

They are crimson. She knows that without him having to tell her. A scream from Endellia casts the thought away immediately. She seizes Excalibur and is up past Catseye before he can even think to stop her. Both Yukes – _her Yukes – _are on their knees before the lich, still struggling to bring it down with magic reserves dwindling as their stamina wears down. Aonyx has a broken leg and cannot move but still he tries to reach Endellia, who is buried up to waist in rocky debris brought raining down from the ceiling. The lich is aflame from her most recent Fira – she is too weak now to cast Firaga – but still it continues towards her with crimson orb outstretched.

"NO!" she is screaming. "I will not look!"

_**Loooook atttttt meeeeee look atttt ittt myyyy beeeaauuutifulllll moooon**_

Endellia turns her head aside as a last resort as the crystal ball is thrust into her face.

Cecille lunges. Her legendary weapon sweeps down and the crystal ball is cleaved in twain. A pivot, neatly as a dancer, and she drives Excalibur home into the claggy waist and pulls _up –_

The ethereal flesh splits grotesquely, spraying her with a foul slime, but her work is done. The lich is dying. It scrabbles on the floor for its broken crystal, bone staff tossed aside. Cecille stares past it to the remains of six thrones, now mouldy with damp centuries of misuse.

And behind them, a giant rune of magic inscribed on the wall.

"How do I activate that?" she yells at Endellia, heaving a boulder aside to allow the Yuke maid some breathing room. The Yuke shakes her head weakly. "I don't know! It's a Rebenan pictogram, I don't understand it!"

She runs past the wailing lich and presses her palms flat against the wall.

"Help me!" she cries. "Help me remember what you did!"

"It's easy," a voice says amicably, and there by her side is a girl with a bob of bright red hair all wrapped about in a blue shawl. "Watch."

The rune flares brilliantly, leaving an afterimage of yellow and purple on the inside of Cecille's eyelids. The lich, bony arm raised to smite Endellia and crush her skull, is struck by a blast of wind roaring in through the open crypt door. Cecille hits the floor in desperate self-preservation as the rune activates, dragging the lich backwards ever further as is claws vainly at the stale air. It is over in a second, perhaps less. The rune-light dims and goes out; the wall remains unchanged for all that it has just swallowed a demon.

Cecille looks all around for the little girl and sees nothing.

In the background, Aonyx Cures his leg with a grunted curse; Catseye digs the stunned Endellia from her rocky prison and she collapses onto him in a rare moment of weakness and lack of composure.

"Cecille?" Catseye calls as he does his best to support the slender maid. "Are you all right?"

"Fine," she whispers. It is all too easy to believe in this chilly chamber that the lich has sucked some of the life from her. "Fine."

* * *

The first thing Aonyx did on their return to the caravan was to go through his alchemical supplies and throw out every crystal ball shard he possessed with the most genteel of shudders.

"What happened?" Catseye snarls impatiently. Everyone seems to know something he does not, which does not suit his ego one iota.

"The lich was a Yuke from the days of Rebena," Endellia replies mutely. "Held together by determination to rule the city and miasma. Perhaps... the Yukish king or queen."

"No," Cecille says. "She was... an advisor, perhaps. She told me when I was staring into the orb that she was a Lunite."

Aonyx tutted softly. "As I thought."

"Anyone care to tell me what a loonite is?" Catseye asks. Aonyx sighs, and studies his Clear ring distractedly. "They were a cult, in basest terms. There were several attempts made in Rebena's early history to seize power from the eight rulers of the citadel by this cult, who worshipped the red moon."

"There were only six thrones," Catseye points out blankly.

"The Selkies came to Rebena and installed their own rulers after all but one uprising by the Lunites occurred. The last attempt succeeded, historians agree. The Lunites seized power and murdered many. This is one of the theories behind Rebena's fall."

Again, Cecille shakes her head. "No. She told me the red moon was a sign from Raem that something important was going to happen. I think the Lunites were tricked by Raem into thinking they would rule Rebena if they let in the miasma."

"Let in the miasma?" Aonyx says, puzzled. "But there were no defences back then. The miasma would have gotten in without their help."

Another flashback now, this time gentle, and she is an observer rather than an unwilling participant: a cavern full of gently singing crystals somewhere deep underground. It is the loveliest thing Cecille has ever seen.

"They grew crystals," she says softly. "Whether they knew it or not, the Rebenans did have one defence. The Lunites must have smashed them."

"How do you know that?" Catseye is looking at her eyes warily, searching for the crimson flicker that has long since disappeared, and she frowns.

"I don't know. This place shows me things I would rather not see."

"And how did you know that the crystal ball would brainwash Cecille?" Catseye demands of the Yukes.

"It was a cheap imitation of the red moon, designed to amplify the suggestions made by miasma to unwary caravanners," Endellia shrugs. "It is uncommon, but to be greatly feared. A Yukish invention," she adds quietly, shrouded in her shame at this blot on her race's genius. "The symbology behind it is mostly lost now."

Catseye lets out a low whistle. "So what was this Lunite doing?"

"She wanted to bring people back to Rebena and enslave them to her will. After all, what is it to be the ruler of a city with no subjects?"

"Aonyx," Cecille interrupts him suddenly. "What happened to the royal families?"

"As I recall from the family trees in Shella's archives, the Lilty royals remained in Rebena to fight the monsters save for their son, who left with the refugees. This son became the head of the great Lilty empire which proceeded to span the continent. There are debates as to what happened to the Clavats, as it is suggested their king was controlled by traitorous advisor and his daughter stolen from him. The Yukes left with their tribe, using their magic to sustain the crystals in place of myrrh. So draining and near impossible a task was it that few Yukes survived. Fueling the crystals killed most of them."

Catseye's unspoken question is directed towards Aonyx with just a flicker of his green eyes.

"History remains silent on the fate of the Selkies," Aonyx says slowly.

"The Clavat princess stolen away," Cecille says, "was she young? Red hair?"

Aonyx raises his hands. "I know only what I have read. I am sorry, but not even I can recall finding such a detail. You must surely know most of Rebena's documents are lost. That is why its existence is doubted in this era."

"What do we do now?" Catseye asks. The last drop of myrrh from the tree atop the pyramid has filled the chalice to the very brim.

Endellia speaks the fastest. "We leave this godforsaken place, and never come back. I dislike it with an intensity."

"Just say hate, Endellia." Catseye looks weary. "It's acceptable to express irrational, unscientific emotions sometimes."

They fall to bickering as they hurriedly prepare the caravan to leave. Even though the pyramid is empty now, it is easy to feel as though it continues to watch their activities. Tasks which therefore should have been simple are made harder by trembling fingers and paranoia. Cecille decides to leave them to it.

The fog closes in around Cecille as she paces as far away from her friends as the chalice boundary allows, and she takes a deep breath. Her legs are stony and numb, arms sore at the shoulders and elbows from wielding Excalibur so intensively despite all her practices. Had the rune not activated when it did, she doubted she would have had the energy to finish the lich off with a sword. She was certain that the rune's activation had been nothing to do with her.

"Thank you," she offers to the world at large. There is no reply, of course. No one is even listening. Rebena is well and truly dead. It is only fitting, therefore, that she leaves a respectful gift on the largest gravestone the world has ever seen. She takes her blue flower from her buttonhole, noticing how the fog collects wetly on it almost instantly, and lays it in the gateway between the two columns.

"Cecille! We're going. We've only got five weeks to get home, woman. Hurry it up!"

_

* * *

_

Dear Harry,

_I've been thinking about some things. The past, to begin with. Remembering can be hard sometimes, can't it? But it's necessary. I'm sorry I haven't been in touch recently. Things have been difficult. We are a long way from home, but we have three drops of myrrh now. _

_I will be home soon, I promise. I love you._

_Cecille_

* * *

End.

There are some allusions to Ring of Fates within this chapter, but as usual I have mutilated most of the canon beyond recognition to suit the themes in my other stories. Sorry, guys. I did love that game though, Meeth especially.

I hope you enjoyed the read. If you've got any questions or constructive criticisms feel free to fire away :)


	2. January

Hello :)

Okay, so I wrote this piece immediately after the preceding one last year. And... they couldn't be more different. Sometimes I like this, and sometimes I don't. After millions of tweaks and re-adjustments, this I what I have for you. I actually wrote it in both past and present tense to see which worked better and decided that present tense with flashbacks was more in-keeping as well as flowing more nicely. But hey, if you'd like to share your opinion on that then please do.

Anyway, January has come around again so it's appropriate. The dungeon (last year, but shhh!) was the Mushroom Forest, and the theme was new beginnings, or resolutions. I tried to combine both. Enjoy!

* * *

**Crysila's caravan, January**

There are two of them, childhood friends - a Yuke boy by the name of Iroh and his Clavatian friend Lucas.

They cut a rather comical pair together, at opposite poles of every range there could possibly be. Where Iroh is tall and gangly, Lucas is short and stocky. Lucas' bright blond hair contrasts sharply with Iroh's richly dark chestnut stripes, and where Iroh wears ornate robes of plum and gold Lucas is dressed simply in a blue tabard. They are chalk and cheese.

But, as Aonyx remarks offhandedly at the sight of them, with variety comes adaptability, and therein lay their potential strength as caravanners.

* * *

_There are eleven hopefuls this year._

_They stand in little groups around Crysila's crystal, an elegant crescent-moon shaped shard with a silver sheen over the customary blue. One pair, a Yuke and a Clavat, stand a little way apart from the others. They aren't speaking much, as if all that they want to say has been said, but huddle very close together._

_It is said that every village has its own method of selection for the recruiting of caravanners – luck of the draw, volunteering, replacement down a list. Crysila's method was much more unusual. As the sun begins its climb from behind the horizon, two mountains block out the majority of the rays until mid-morning. However, one stream of light passes through the narrow valley and directly through Crysila's crystal. This light is refracted by its prism-like properties – and if it strikes the face of a particular hopeful they are allowed to join the caravan._

_Logic dictates that the light must always be refracted in the same manner – there are no other variables. The crystal does not change shape. The sun always rises in the same manner. The mountains hardly move a few yards overnight. So, the light must be always come from the same place, and strike the same spot on the crystal._

_Why then, does the ray of light not always end up shining in the same direction?_

_Alchemists have failed to put forward a working theory, and it has since become lore of the town that anyone struck by the light has been chosen by the crystal. For the last six years the light had not chosen anyone, but Lucas the Clavat feels that perhaps this year it will. A short call from the Elder sends the eleven potential recruits scurrying to form a ring around the circle, shivering in the bleak dullness of the early morning._

_The sun rises._

_And Lucas smiles, because the light flickers over his face. Across the circle from him, Iroh the Yuke is also illuminated by the soft glow. There are a few grumblings from unhappy trainees and some cheers of support and congratulations for the two new caravanners of Crysila. With an expression of utmost glee, Lucas runs around the crystal to his closest friend with a smile all over his face._

_To his surprise, Iroh does not look in the least excited – more dismayed._

"_I don't think I'll be any good at this," Iroh confides quietly to Lucas. "I only came because you wanted to."_

_The Clavat, eyes wide and eager, shakes his head vehemently. "Don't be stupid, Iroh," he says confidently. "You'll be brilliant."_

"_I hope so…" Iroh says doubtfully. Lucas punches him ever so lightly on his furry arm, as he has done ever since they were old enough to playfight together._

"_Don't worry about it. Wherever we go, we go together. Right?"_

_Iroh looks hopefully down at him. "Promise?"_

"_I promise."_

* * *

For their first droplet of myrrh, the Crysila caravan rides to the Mushroom Forest that blooms in the Downs. Against the backdrop of the giant fungi – so large they outstrip the trees that dot the rest of the land – the two new recruits look even smaller.

"Say, Iroh," Lucas comments. "Do you suppose they got so big because of something in the water here?"

"I doubt it," Iroh replies. "Why?"

"I was just wondering," Lucas says, and an absent smile lights his angelic features. "I said to our Lise that when I came back she'd have grown up a bit, and I thought if I sent her a flask of whatever these monstrosities drink she certainly would."

"You shouldn't drink strange water until you've boiled it," Iroh says cautiously. Such is the manner of their friendship; Lucas is the dreamer, full of fire, adventure and ideas, and Iroh is his anchor to reality. For his part, Lucas is the tide that pulls otherwise careful Iroh forward through life.

On the front of the caravan the young Yukish woman Endellia twitches the reins, and the papoamus slows to a halt. Clattering comes from within the cabin as the other three members of the Crysila caravan – Cecille the Clavat, Aonyx the Yuke and Catseye the Selkie - grab their weapons and kit and one by one exit onto the dirt track.

"Hey, rookies," Catseye hails them both with a sardonic cheer. "You ready to go?"

"Does it really matter whether they think they are or not?" Iroh hears Endellia ask quietly. "We'll soon find out, won't we?"

And that is when Iroh realises that, soon, he will have to kill something.

* * *

The hedgehog pie eyes the two greenhorns analytically. Lucas already has his sword out and levelled eagerly in the direction of the monster, while Iroh hovers behind him somewhat uncertainly.

"Lucas," Iroh says, nerves jangling so loudly he is wondering whether Lucas can hear, "wait for the others – "

"They're busy," replies Lucas evenly.

And it is true; close behind them the four veterans are expertly tackling an ahriman and a worm with time-tested co-operation. This hedgehog pie had merely emerged from the shrubbery while the two new recruits guarded the chalice.

"Don't worry, Iroh. You watch the chalice and I'll take care of it. It's only small." Lucas takes a step in the hedgehog pie's direction. The spiny beast hops away, out of reach, and bobs from foot to foot. Still it does not make a move. Behind Iroh there is a screech as the ahriman is grounded once again by another of Endellia's Gravity spells.

"Lucas!" he calls worriedly as the Clavat advances, horribly alone. When Lucas is but a few feet away the hedgehog pie raises both arms with a chattering cackle, and Iroh sees the telltale ring of embers of a Fire spell sketching itself in front of the Clavat's feet. Lucas presses on unknowingly, and his foot enters the casting zone.

"Stop!" Iroh yells, but if Lucas is listening he does not obey. The Yuke boy wavers, not daring to follow and leave the chalice unprotected - but too nervous of dropping the precious vessel or accidentally cutting the other caravanners out of the aura to risk picking it up. "Aonyx, Cecille, help!"

And then suddenly Lucas is aflame, orange light lapping at his tabard hungrily, and the boy is too startled to make a noise until the fire leaps from his sleeve to his skin - and then he _howls_.

Iroh is knocked aside as Catseye shoots past. The Selkie's Clear spell is already taking shape before he has even reached Lucas, and then the fire is gone. Lucas falls to the floor, shocked.

Catseye makes short work of the hedgehog pie, and then it is all over. Cecille appears at Iroh's left shoulder, the other Yukes at his right. When Endellia opens her mouth to make some scathing remark, Aonyx hushes her.

"It would be more beneficial, I think, to leave this to Catseye."

"Are you alright, kid?" Catseye is asking Lucas, and the Clavat jerks his head in some semblance of a nod before scrambling upright.

"F-fine," he says. "Just surprised."

"You're not burned?"

Lucas inspects his arm. "No."

"Good. Now, that's your first lesson," Catseye says seriously. "Tell me what you think it was."

"Er," Lucas glances at Iroh for some help, as has been his way since babyhood, since the schoolroom of Crysila, but the Selkie shakes his head. "I'm asking you, kid. What was that lesson that you just learned?"

"To watch out for magic?" Lucas hazards.

"No," Catseye says. "Try again."

"Never to judge the strength of an opponent by its appearance?"

"No, but that was a better guess," Catseye says. "Lucas, did you or did you not hear Iroh tell you to stay still?"

"Yes," Lucas mumbles, suddenly abashed.

Catseye is not patronising, but not understanding either. "Why did you not do as he said?"

"Because Iroh always tells me to wait," Lucas says defiantly into the gaping silence, "and sometimes I don't need to."

"Does he now," Catseye looks thoughtfully at Iroh for just one moment and then all his attention is back on Lucas, "but, Lucas, what about those times when he warns you and you _do_ need to wait?"

There is no reply from Lucas, although the Clavat is glowering at the floor. Around him, Iroh can suddenly feel the presence of the rest of the caravan and realises how judgemental the tableau must seem to his friend. Catseye folds his arms. For a moment, both new recruits are forcibly reminded of Crysila's grumpy Clavat schoolteacher.

"That, kid, is your first lesson. You listen to your companions. If they tell you what you're doing is unwise, then you stop and listen. It could save your life. What was your second lesson?"

"Oh, for goodness' sake," Endellia mutters. Though Iroh is not looking, he can physically feel Cecille the Clavat's icy cold glare of warning cut into the Yuke maid. She falls silent immediately.

"I don't know," Lucas is saying flatly.

"Your second lesson is to never take a monster on by yourself. You always need someone to watch your back. Repeat those two lessons back to me."

Obediently, Lucas does so.

"Good," Catseye says, and finally he looks over to the rest of the group.

"Quite finished with your caravanning for fools workshop?" Endellia asks sharply. Catseye ignores her and his questing green eyes seek out Aonyx's. "Ready to move on," he affirms brightly, "but maybe we need a… rearrangement?"

There is a hint of something in his voice, but Iroh just can't place it. Perhaps Catseye is making some sort of coded request?

"Good," Aonyx says from behind him, and glances at Lucas. "Lucas, perhaps you would like to partner Catseye for this next stretch?"

Lucas blinks, and stares at the Selkie. Catseye winks.

"Aye sir," Lucas replies slowly.

They move off again, Lucas following Catseye closely as they patrol the edge of the crystal boundary. Iroh hangs back, close to Aonyx, who carries the chalice with just as much ease as if he were holding a butterfly.

"It seems Catseye has taken a liking to your friend," Aonyx comments, after brief silence. Iroh does not reply.

"Perhaps he feels Lucas would be an ideal replacement for him when he decides to leave the caravan," Aonyx continues. It is a prompt of some sort, Iroh knows, but he is not entirely sure what the older Yuke is driving at. What is he supposed to say? Where have all these new, secret rules of conversation come from?

"Is Endellia to be your replacement?" he asks eventually, after mentally exhausting other possible options.

"Good lady, no," Aonyx says, glancing forward to where the imposing young Yuke woman strides along beside Cecille. "She knows nothing of the healing arts, and she has not the required even temperament."

Again, that expectant silence.

"I don't understand," Iroh says in exasperation. "What do you want me to say?"

"I am waiting for you to tell me you have learned a lesson too," Aonyx replies kindly.

"I didn't do anything wrong," protests Iroh. "I stayed by the chalice as I was instructed, and I did not rush forward to attack a monster unguarded."

Aonyx asks, ever patient, "So what is your lesson?"

"I don't know!"

"Lucas' lesson was to be more careful, more mindful of his instructions," Aonyx adds helpfully, but still it means nothing.

Iroh shrugs. The movement is typically Clavatian and he has learned it from Lucas. It looks odd on his spindly frame. "You will have to tell me, sir."

"Your lesson, Iroh, is to learn that it is acceptable to _ignore_ the instructions," Aonyx explains, "because there may come a time when, if you do not bend the rules a little, Lucas may suffer for it. If you had gone after him today you could have kept him out of that spell, but you did not because you were frightened."

"How will I know when to break the rules, though?" Iroh wails.

"Ah," Aonyx replies, smiling behind his visor. "That will be _your _second lesson."

* * *

Some dozen twisting turns later, they come across an innocent-looking flower sprouting unobtrusively in the middle of the road. Lucas and Catseye are at the front of the party on their circuit of the boundary, and as such are currently responsible for dealing with any new threats.

Lucas makes to step forward.

"Wait," says Catseye sharply.

And Lucas does.

The Selkie smiles. "When I asked you what you thought your first lesson was," he says conversationally, "what did you say to me?"

Lucas eyes the plant warily. Behind him the rest of the party have come to a halt again, aware that another instructive session is taking place.

"I said…" Lucas' mouth forms the words slowly, thoughtfully; and, all the time, his eyes are on the plant.

A leaf twitches.

"I said – "

The flower rears up out of the glistening soil, arching its stem like some prehensile neck and flutters its petals threateningly. The fist-sized seed comes shooting through the air like a bullet... and it bounces harmlessly off Lucas' upraised shield.

" – never to judge the strength of an enemy by its appearance," the Clavat finishes.

"Well done," Catseye says triumphantly. He looks proud, but of himself or his new protégé Iroh is not sure. The plant lasts less than ten seconds between them.

* * *

The hedgehog pie drops a Fire magicite that comes to a halt at Iroh's feet. He looks questioningly at Endellia, for she is the designated offensive mage of the caravan, but she shakes her head dismissively and holds up a paw by way of explanation; she already wears a Fire ring.

"Do I leave it?" Iroh asks no one in particular.

"Well, why don't you try using it?" Cecille suggests, already dropping her own monster's spoils into the group's item bag. Afterwards, Iroh isn't sure whether he'd started because Cecille didn't address him very often or because the idea had never occurred to him.

The Fire magicite glows invitingly orange by his foot.

"You can use magic, yes?" Cecille asks of him. Iroh must have hesitated, because she adds gently, "It doesn't matter if you aren't confident. You can help me on the front line, being as my partner seems to be borrowing yours."

She nods towards where Catseye is chatting easily with Lucas, and gives Iroh one of her rare smiles. Iroh feels the jealousy that has been boiling ever since Catseye singled out Lucas as his favourite begin to recede slightly.

"I can use it," Iroh ventures. "I think."

"I won't say there's no pressure," Cecille says, voice serious, "because there is and you know there is, but if you get it wrong Endellia will more than likely pick up the slack for you so just keep out of harm's way."

It is then that Iroh realises that Cecille _know_s.

Since entering the forest, Iroh had not actively sought out any monsters, nor struck a single blow. He'd always managed to be away from the main fray, near the chalice, and his only action had been to use the Cure stone he'd already picked up to heal Catseye. He is scared of doing it wrong, scared of getting in the way, scared of getting hurt, and Cecille has noticed.

"I'm sorry," he mumbles. Cecille looks hard at him for a moment longer than is comfortable, and then gestures with her free hand.

"Don't apologise. We can drop you back off at Crysila on the way up to Tida if you feel you aren't cut out for caravanning. You did your best."

"No!" he exclaims, a little too loudly. "I want to be here. I just don't know what to do. I've always known what to do, and now I don't and it's just unnerving me."

"I see," Cecille says quietly, as if contemplating.

There is a silence as everyone around them tactfully keeps themselves busy for a few more seconds so that their discussion can close.

"I saw your Cure spell," the Clavat woman says. "It was a good one, and you saw what Aonyx missed. Perhaps," she pauses, and glances at the senior Yuke over Iroh's shoulder. He nods, only a slight inclination of the head, " - perhaps you would like to come under the instruction of Aonyx? One more healer is not to be sniffed at, especially now that we number six."

Iroh looks relieved and nods. Smiling, Cecille shoulders her beautiful sword Excalibur. "Well, then. Now you have a purpose. Let's go."

* * *

The marlboro had been just a tiny little thing, barely bigger than a striped apple.

Why then, Iroh thinks bitterly, is he now fighting for his life against something bigger than his entire house? Within seconds of Lucas and Catseye approaching its miniscule form it had inhaled what seemed like half the energy of the mushroom forest and ballooned to immense proportions, teeth as long as Iroh's thin arms and vines thrashing with a life of their own. Catseye had obviously been expecting such a move, because he had warned Lucas to stand back; Cecille and the other Yukes had not even approached it. Iroh had hung back silently too, even though no one had told him to, because he was still frightened and that fact alone made him burn with embarrassment under his sallet.

Now the fear is gone, at least. It's been replaced by a burning desire to just _stay alive. _

Without thinking he raises his arms for another cast, blasting out a Cure in Cecille's path as she darts in front of him. Catseye swoops out of the melee to dash through the haze of blue too before it disappears. Iroh sees with a baffled wonderment that the Selkie is smiling. He is enjoying this dance with death!

Iroh is snapped from his confusion by the smell of scorched fur and realises it is his own; Endellia's Firaga has exploded beyond even her control as she is startled by an attack from behind. Iroh is only just turning to see if she is alright as Aonyx heals her with a gentle flick of his wrist.

"Pay attention, Iroh," he says with infinite calmness, and, throat dry, Iroh returns his attention to Cecille and Catseye as they hack busily at the base of the giant marlboro.

"Here comes a drag!" Catseye yells out gleefully, and Aonyx hefts the chalice from the ground just in time. The marlboro throws its gaping jaws open impossibly wide to draw such a forcible breath that all six caravanners are tugged towards it, fighting every inch of the way. Only Endellia has actively let the wind carry her in, concentrating on her next cast even as her feet plough furrows in the dirt, to unleash a second Firaga neatly into the gaping maw.

"Iroh!" Aonyx called. "With me now!"

Iroh clutches his Cure tightly and watches as Aonyx sketches out a casting zone. As quickly as he can, the young Yuke boy aims his spell in roughly the same area and lets go –

The vines come bursting up through the earth, showering him with soil and pebbles. There are three cries of alarm – Catseye, whose arm had been sliced by a rapidly rising thorn; Cecille, who had been tripped by a sly root; and then Lucas, who had just been too slow.

Iroh watches it with his mouth open. Afterwards, he still doesn't quite believe it.

Lucas is physically lifted from the floor by the impact of the vine from below. The Clavat is flung skywards with a yell of complete astonishment and drops like a brick before he even has time to comprehend the pain that will follow when he strikes the floor. He comes down with that terrible crunch that announces at least one broken bone.

- and then Aonyx lets go his Cure spell atop Iroh's and the Curaga blossoms like a blue rose above Cecille's head, an individual serpent of turquoise light snaking out to illuminate every caravanner present. Iroh feels the soothing sensation but doesn't register it, instead abandoning Aonyx's side to run to Lucas with panic surging through every vein.

"Lucas!"

Even as he arrives he sees the Curaga knitting up the torn flesh. Lucas is on his knees and very nearly upright again when Iroh takes his arm anxiously. Almost irritably, Lucas shakes his Yuke friend off.

"I'm fine, Iroh! I can do this!"

"You're still hurt – " Iroh protests.

But Lucas only pulls his arm free and starts running with a noticeable limp back towards the marlboro and Catseye, his new partner, determination in his hard eyes. Beyond him, the marlboro is roaring.

* * *

_Iroh had been told by his mother that Yukes possessed the gift of foresight._

_He had wanted to believe it, that he had such a wonderful power, but it had been a long time before he had cause to believe it had manifested itself. He'd longed for just a little everyday miracle to prove it. Anything._

_And then, once, he had pulled Lucas out of the way of a falling roof slate before it had even left the lip of the drain. It had happened more often after that. Aged just nine, he'd come running in with a bucket of water just as the oven belched a tongue of flame in his mother's direction._

_He'd always known that, to some extent, his mother's words were true. Yukes could feel the shape of the future. But his foresight had always manifested itself as a sudden subconscious urge – he'd seized the bucket that day without quite knowing why or where or even what, and his legs had carried him towards home without the intervention of his brain._

_He'd never known what was coming before, not until it actually came._

_Not until then. Not until the moment he'd seen Lucas' shadowy figure impacting with the earth before it had even happened._

* * *

"LUCAS!" Iroh roars. "STOP!"

But Lucas doesn't, and the second vine seizes the stocky Clavat youth with terrifying intent and, almost carelessly, slams him back down into the floor.

The Yuke boy casts Cure with unbelievable precision, the spell taking shape underneath Lucas a split-second before he hits the dirt. In theory, it might have worked. In theory, the Cure might have fixed the Clavat's wounds as quickly as they came. Iroh clings to that meagre hope even as the vine withdraws and the distant thrashing of the marlboro is suddenly more desperate, the screams of fury becoming the wails of a creature in its death throes.

He known it wasn't enough, known that it wouldn't work, but he'd tried, gods knew he'd _tried_ –

* * *

Cecille watches the lone figure of the Yuke boy as he trudges desolately behind the caravan. She briefly considers trying to talk to him. Experience has taught her that this is often not well-received.

Yukes deal with their problems alone. It's a cultural thing, or so she understands, proof of their intelligence and stoicism in the face of the seemingly insurmountable.

Watching Iroh, Cecille thinks that it is the stupidest thing she has ever heard. Slowly, so as not to disturb fitfully snoozing Catseye, Cecille drops off the backboard and paces herself at a slow walk so that eventually Iroh catches up with her. She says nothing, waiting respectfully for the grieving boy to acknowledge her presence. It takes him a good half an hour.

"I told him to stop," Iroh whispers.

"I know."

"Why didn't he stop, then?"

Cecille sighs. _Because he was young and stupid. Because he didn't know. Because he thought he didn't need to. Because._

"I can't tell you that," she replies softly. "But you did what you could."

"Why didn't we have a stone of Life?" Iroh asks suddenly. "Or a phoenix down?"

"Because we were unlucky," says Cecille. There is no other real answer to that question.

Iroh takes a deep, ragged breath. "If we go back – "

"I'm sorry, Iroh," she cuts him off immediately. She's seen this before, this little shoot of tortured guilt, and knows that humouring the boy will not help in the slightest. The shoot needs cutting off abruptly before it has the chance to grow vines around his heart and choke his soul, or else the boy will never recover. "He's gone."

"How do you know?" the Yuke demands. He's angry, so angry, but he's got nothing to be angry at.

"Because it's happened before," she replies evenly, "and doubtless it will happen again before I retire."

Iroh stops dead. When he next speaks, his voice is hollow. "Cecille, just go away please."

"As you wish," the Clavat agrees. Before she heads back to the caravan though, she says, "We can leave you at Crysila on the way to Tida."

* * *

_Lucas is bleeding absolutely everywhere. It doesn't look real, the blood. It's too dark and too thick, nothing like the bright red watery stuff he'd imagined before. Iroh pats his companion feebly with trembling fingers, searching for any sign of life._

_Lucas gives him one in the form of a twitch of the hand._

"_Lucas?" _

_The Cure just won't take root. It dissolves uselessly in the air above his still form, and try though he might Iroh can't focus the magic on his friend. Dimly, he perceives that this is no fault of his own, that it means only that Lucas is beyond the help of magic, but Iroh is too detached from reality to comprehend this. Cure after Cure spirals away into nothingness, and still Lucas continues to bleed._

_No one can have this much blood in them._

"_Lucas," Iroh pleads. "Come back."_

_There aren't any last words. There is just an expression of mild surprise and knuckles coloured white from the agony. _

"_I told you to stop," Iroh says distractedly, his energy dwindling to near nothing as he tries for the last time to Cure. "You never listen to me, Lucas."_

_Very softly, Lucas draws his last breath. Iroh would never forget that one little noise._

_Afterwards, Catseye finds them. There is no Life stone, he explains somewhat dully, and the Selkie tells Iroh that he is sorry. Somehow, that doesn't seem to cut it._

_They bury him near the myrrh tree. What else can they do? Iroh tries to find something, anything, to mark the grave, but in the end has to settle for a small boulder that looks no different to the rest of the sandy coloured stone in this accursed place. The only personal trinket that he can think of to leave behind for the Clavat is the little carved charm Lucas had given him for his tenth birthday. In the end, he decides against it. It is too difficult to just leave it there when he's trying so hard to cling to anything that kept Lucas alive._

_After Aonyx has said a few quiet words, the group of veteran caravanners gather a little way away from the new grave and stand silently under a cloud of their own gloom. Iroh lingers._

"_You said that we'd go together." He speaks to the boulder almost accusingly. "You promised."_

* * *

"No," Iroh says flatly. Cecille pauses, looking back at him.

"No?"

Iroh scowls behind his emotionless visor. "That's what I said."

"You want to stay on?"

"Yes."

She looks him up and down, and decides not to argue. The caravan reaches the fork in the road and turns towards the miasma path, bound for Tida, and how ironic Iroh finds it that his second drop of myrrh will be provided by the dead.

* * *

End.

Another long piece.

Here's hoping you enjoyed the read. And a belated happy new year!


	3. February

So I was messing around with symbolism and metaphors and this is what I got. I like rain, what can I say.

This was initially designed to be a sort of baton-pass story so I could play around with some writing techniques, with a part told from the perspective of each of Crysila's caravanners. In the end, Endellia and Iroh sort of took it over, with Catseye hogging the opening like the go-getter he is. Anyway, you all get a nice little snippet of character introspection! :D

If we're continuing in the theme of the calendar challenge, February's theme is growth (since we get the first snowdrops round about that time) and the location is Marr's Pass. Here you go, and please enjoy.

* * *

**Crysila's caravan, February**

It's raining. Normally, Catseye quite likes the rain. Today it's just making him sad.

Marr's Pass is usually a busy little village, at the crossroads between two of the most frequently visited dungeons on the maps and the Jegon Port. As he stares out from his inn room window, he finds it quite difficult to believe. No one appears to be awake. Even the customary spirals of smoke above the smithies are non-existent, as if everyone has decided to stay in bed today and let the world go by unnoticed.

Certainly this appears to be the case with his caravan. Cecille's room is locked; this is not unusual, Cecille being about as open and approachable as a padlock, but Catseye attributes today's drawn bolt to weariness. When he'd looked in on Aonyx earlier, he'd seen the Yuke propped upright against the wall, apparently intently studying a thick volume. A morning greeting had completely failed to evoke a response, and this was when Catseye had realised his Yukish companion was asleep. He hadn't been surprised when Endellia, sharp little thing that she was, had briskly waved him on when he tried to make conversation. Insofar as he can tell through the visor, she's just as tired by a good week's worth of bumpy travelling as the rest of them.

Iroh, the rookie, is nowhere to be found. Probably he's out in the downpour, trying to wash away his grief. In Catseye's opinion, this is not what rain is for. Rain is for making things grow. Then again, if the Yuke boy will benefit and move on from his cleansing, then maybe being drenched is the best idea after all.

He feels bad about losing the kid too. Hell, they all do. No life should have to be that short. But things roll on, time doesn't stop, wounds heal and memories remain. Everyone has to go eventually. Rain is probably one of the few things that doesn't change – except on Leuda, of course, where rain is almost as unpredictable as Endellia's temper.

Maybe it's because he's a Selkie, maybe the water-based culture of his tribe has made it so, but Catseye can pinpoint the significant periods of his life simply by remembering the stormclouds. It rained the day his mother died, soft sad little droplets that made no noise, running down the windows to match the tears running down his cheeks and dripping off his chin. It rained the day he first stole a wallet, hard loud pounding that drowned out his fleeing footsteps and the shout of surprise from behind. It rained on his eighteenth birthday, the gods of the sky being the only ones who cared enough to mark the day. Dramatic effect dictates that it'll probably rain the day he dies too, although of course he won't really know about that.

It rained the day he met Cecille. Catseye doesn't really ponder the meaning of that, not that explanations haven't ever occurred to him.

There is a quiet creak behind him, and he glances over his shoulder to see Endellia. The Yukish maid is stood in the doorway, twisting her paws together in an uncharacteristic gesture of disquiet.

"What's wrong, Dell?" He is the only person who dares to shorten her name; he is the only person who cares so little about the formalities that so occupy the minds of Yukes. (Or maybe it's because he forgets how unpleasant it is being frozen to the side of the caravan until parts of him he does not care to bring into everyday conversation threaten to drop off). For once Endellia does not reprimand him for it, something those private areas of his body are very pleased about. Instead she steps into his room. "Catseye. I was wondering merely if you were aware of Iroh's whereabouts."

"Nah. He's probably out enjoying the, er," Catseye flicks a hand lazily towards the window, "the weather."

There is a certain way Endellia tilts her helmet that is indicative of reproach, or perhaps affectionate annoyance. Catseye has always found it quite endearing. He's never going to tell her that, of course. She might stab him.

"Amusing," Endellia replies quietly. "Well. I might go and join him."

"Hmm," Catseye says, affecting a neutral expression. She doesn't say much else, only closes the door with a little click.

* * *

It is raining. Endellia does not like rain at all. For one thing, it gets her fur wet.

Rain is a chemical necessity for the biological continuation of the world. Rain contains various nutrients essential for plant growth. Without plants, there would be no sustenance for animals and sentient beings alike. There would be no oxygen. Ergo, there would be no life. Rain is important; she grudgingly admits this much is true. She just wishes it didn't have to be so... _wet. _

Crysila is practically built on water. Reminiscent of Shella, the town is largely comprised on various islands of stone accessible via neat little bridges – although nothing as sophisticated as the entrance to the ancestral Yukish homeland, she mentally amends. Even today, with three years of caravanning experience brimming in her diamond sallet and a magical knowledge that already extends far beyond her books, she cannot fathom out that wonder of arcane practice.

But all this is beside the point. The _point_ is that it is raining, and for some reason she is standing in the aforementioned rain. The reason is Iroh. What his reason is for being out in this atrocious precipitation she does not understand. Another thing she does not understand is why she wishes to know this reason. Carefully, methodically, she files the questions away for further investigation somewhere in the neatly organised archive of her mind and sets out from the relative shelter of the inn's porch.

Her father had said to her that she was a Yuke through and through, and yet not a Yuke at all.

Initially, she did not understand. As a child, she excelled – still excels – in offensive magical application, passing every exam set for her by both Crysila's and Shella's finest tutors with the highest of honours. She was – is – curt, decisive, rational and reasonable, almost perfect in her analysis of any situation. Now a caravanner, she still reads every publication of any relevance to her studies, to her lifestyle, absorbing theory after theory in a manner that astounds even Aonyx, master of scholars. Endellia was – is – proud and haughty to a fault.

Therein lies the answer. Pride is not a trait becoming of Yukes. Hot, fiery, sharp-tongued pride, is something a Lilty understands best.

Ancient lore remarks somewhat mysteriously that the race of Lilties was forged from the element of fire. While this is clearly impossible and somewhat childish, Endellia cannot help but wonder at the relevance of it as she steps gingerly between ever-expanding puddles. Only someone with fire in their soul would be so perturbed by something as ridiculous as rain.

Her fur is wet. She hates being wet. With a shiver Endellia shakes all the crystalline droplets from her elegant arms, only to find they are replaced almost instantly. This, more than anything, is irritating. She makes a mental note to inquire whether or not there is an accessory that wards away water, like the thunder badge Aonyx wears so carefully on his tabard to guard against lightning magic.

She doubts it. Perhaps she could make one – after all, any Clavat with a needle these days can call themselves a tailor. Why not her?

There, in the concealing fog of the drizzle, is another silhouette. Knowing by the mere process of common sense that it could only be Iroh, she alters direction slightly so that her course will match with his.

* * *

It's raining, slowly but steadily filling up the well before him. Could he have found anything more fitting to describe his current situation?

Staring blankly down into the well, Iroh thinks not. Dark, dismal, lonely and full of tears. The well stares back up at him with a single mournful black eye as if apologising for the weather. He wonders whether or not he would seem mad to tell it that the weather is not what is making him miserable.

He always associates rain with sadness. It's like someone 'up there' is crying. He recalls his mother telling him and his younger sister bedtime stories on particularly fearsome nights to soothe away the fright, imparting strangely comforting tales of nonsense that managed to be perfectly acceptable at the time. In a certain narrative, there had been a princess, forever imprisoned in crystal. When she was sad, so were the skies. When she cried, so did they.

At the time, his sister had been the more enchanted of the two of them by this fairytale. She had dragged him out during a light drizzle more than once to keep vigil over Crysila's crystal, just in case the princess was in there and all she needed was a hug. His sister had always been so... affectionate, for a Yuke.

Right now, Iroh misses her almost as much as he misses Lucas.

He turns his head to look at the crystal of Marr's Pass. He still isn't one for myths, being far too sensible and grown up for those now, but he looks nonetheless. Just in case.

Endellia appears quite suddenly from the gentle hiss of the downpour like a flaming beacon in thick mist. He is not sure he really wants to see her. After all, he's fairly certain she doesn't like him, and right now he wants to be alone. Endellia continues to approach. Iroh hardly thinks that he could ever associate her with the word 'tentatively', but then again there are lots of things that Iroh thought could never happen.

She joins him at the well, although she has the decency to stand opposite him rather than next to him. For someone to be in Lucas' spot is too hard. The momentary flicker of gratitude fizzles out in the rain, however, and he begins to resent her intrusion on his solitude. They stand in silence for a good few minutes, wrapped about by rising mist and misunderstandings, and Iroh finds his attention increasingly drawn from his misery to the Yukish maid. Why is she here?

"I don't understand," Endellia says eventually, and raises her head to stare at him. "What it is that you seek to find by... watching this well?"

"I'm not trying to find anything," Iroh replies, trying to avoid her curiosity. It is so focused and sceptical that it feels like a blacksmith's poker across the face, and he is forced to study her in his peripheral vision to avoid his eyes watering. "I'm just looking."

Endellia considers this. He can practically see the face underneath the visor going from expression to expression, until finally she inquires, "What is the point of looking if you do not expect to find something?"

She doesn't understand. Of course she doesn't understand. Just like her sallet, Endellia's heart is made of diamond. No doubt it is beautiful, even desirable to some, but to Iroh it is just cold and hard-edged. He glares, not at her but at the mossy surface of the nearest stone. "If you expect an answer to that question, then you don't get what I'm doing at all."

"No," concedes Endellia. "I don't."

In surprise, he stares at her.

The rain is sheeting down now, soaking them both to the bone. Apart from the well that separates them both, nothing else of Marr's Pass is visible. Had he taken a moment to admire the effect, Iroh might have thought they were the only two people left in the world.

"You're being irrational," Endellia announces, breaking the spell. "Lucas is dead. Everyone dies. I will. You will. So you must move on, and make the most of the time you have left. Otherwise, what is the point?"

It is the simplicity, the bluntness of the way she says it, that offends him more than anything. Does she think he doesn't already know that? The gentle eddying swirl of the grief in his chest suddenly becomes focused, like a Blizzaga materialising from the atmosphere. All the freezing spires are aimed right at Endellia and her scathing, stupid heartlessness, Endellia whose callousness chills him more than the rain.

"There doesn't have to _be _a point to everything, Endellia!" snarls Iroh. "Would you like me to write you a treatise on it? Would that help you to understand? I am _sad._ I am grieving. I miss Lucas because he was my _friend!_"

She isn't impressed. "How does standing in the rain wallowing in self-pity make a difference?"

"It doesn't! But I don't want to make a difference. I want to... wallow for the sake of wallowing. Grieving is an end in itself. This, this rain," he waves a paw angrily, "doesn't have the ultimate objective of making some Clavat's star carrots grow, but that's what'll happen anyway! Things that don't have a meaning to you right now will do eventually and you should learn to understand that."

For once, Endellia has nothing smart to say in return. She stares at him, taken aback. A single trickle of rainwater curves round the perfect arch of her helm and under the eye slit, a mockery of a tear. Then, with uncharacteristic huskiness to her voice, Endellia says, "I'm sorry about Lucas."

"It's alright," Iroh mumbles. "It wasn't your fault."

"It wasn't your fault either," she responds firmly, and though he has heard this from Catseye, Cecille and Aonyx in turn, hers is the reassurance that soothes him the best. Endellia can only and will only tell the truth.

The silence stretches out once more between them, but this silence is somehow better. This is the silence after the storm, when the world is gradually picking itself up to fight another day.

"Look at the well," Endellia says suddenly.

He does so automatically. For a moment he isn't sure what he is supposed to be looking at, but then he sees his own reflection peering back. The black and empty hole that had made him feel so miserable before is now gone, the well now almost full to the brim with clean rainwater. He leans forward. So does his reflection. Something vital clicks into place somewhere - _if only he could place it_ – and Iroh realises that the heavy weight of his grief is now lighter. Another hole has been filled this day.

"I think you are right," remarks Endellia quietly, "about the rain. I also think, however, that if you continue to stay outside in this weather you will catch hypothermia and then you will be of no use to this caravan at all, rendering your philosophical victory rather pointless."

"I'll come inside in a minute," Iroh replies. With a shrug, Endellia turns on her heel and walks away without another word. Her reflection is multiplied a hundredfold in the prism of the crystal as she passes it, and for a split second Iroh thinks he sees a face among them that isn't hers. For one thing, it is smiling.

All around him, the rain stops.

* * *

**Fin.**

Endellia might be an absolute witch at times, but she means well. Honestly, the next chapter will not be so utterly angsty. And there might be some hackin' and stabbin' in it too. Hope you enjoyed this.


End file.
